“Speaking of which…” Davus pointed toward the islands offshore. Sailing out from the hidden harbor on the far side, a galley appeared, followed by others. Caesar’s fleet was setting sail in pursuit of the Massilians. Why had they waited so long? According to Hieronymus, Pompey’s messenger ship had arrived without alerting the blockade. It seemed that the sudden reappearance of a revamped Massilian navy had taken Caesar’s fleet by surprise. Now they were scrambling to react.
The last of the Massilian ships cleared the harbor and headed up the coast before the first of Caesar’s galleys managed to maneuver past the islands and set sail after them. It was obvious that the Massilian galleys were faster and more skillfully manned. “If it were nothing more than a race, the Massilians would win without a contest,” Davus observed.
“They may have better ships and better sailors,” I granted, “but what will happen when they turn about and fight?”
A third voice answered: “If only we Massilians had a Cassandra, like the Trojans, to answer such questions!”
Davus and I both gave a start and looked up. Looming over us, his hands on his hips, his face starkly lit by the morning sun, stood Hieronymus.
XV
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Hieronymus smiled. “I should think I have more of a right to be here than you do, Gordianus.”
“But how—?”
“The easy way, up the face of the rock starting at the ground, the same way the soldier and the woman climbed up. I saw you earlier, swinging onto the rock from the wall. You’re both lucky you didn’t fall and break your necks.”
I heard little shouts of surprise and alarm and lifted my head just enough to look over the edges of the rock at the spectators on either side. “People have seen you, Hieronymus. I think they must recognize you by your green clothes. They’re staring…pointing…whispering.”
“So? Let them. They probably think I’ve come to throw myself off. They’d like that, I imagine; good luck for the fleet. But I’ve no intention of jumping. That would be premature. It’s up to the priests of Artemis to choose the moment.” He strode to the precipice and peered over. Davus and I stayed low but moved aside to make room. “It’s been a long time since I was up here,” he said. “It does give one a strange feeling.”
A sudden, powerful gust of wind buffeted the rock. Hieronymus staggered. Davus and I both let out a gasp and reached to grip his ankles. He swayed but managed to brace himself. The flash of panic in his eyes was followed by a brittle laugh. “Our famous wind! It’s starting early today. I wonder how it will affect the battle?”
“Hieronymus, sit down! It’s not safe to stand.”
“Yes, I think I will sit. But I won’t lie flat, as you’re doing. I’ve no reason to hide. Neither do you. You’re with me now. You’re with the scapegoat, and if the scapegoat chooses to sit cross-legged on his rock to watch the sea with his friends while we wait for news of the battle, who forbids it?”
“Unless my memory fails me, the First Timouchos forbids it, and quite explicitly.”
“Apollonides!” Hieronymus snorted and waved his hand in the air, as if the dictates of the First Timouchos signified no more to him than the buzzing of a fly.
The scapegoat’s presence on the rock continued to cause a commotion among the spectators along the battlements, but only for a short while. Eventually people grew tired of pointing and whispering. They knew that the Sacrifice Rock was sacred ground and they knew it was off-limits; but I suspect, like most people, they left the finer points of sacred law to the authorities in charge of such things. If the scapegoat himself should appear on the rock, for all they knew he was supposed to be there. They accepted his presence as part of the day’s spectacle, as another of the rituals of battle—like the chanting that echoed from the temples—and they turned to watch the sea.
There was, however, nothing to watch. The last of the Massilian ships had vanished, sailing eastward up the coast. So had the last of the Roman fleet, sailing in pursuit. The battle, if there was to be one, would take place elsewhere, presumably off Taurois, where the Pompeian relief fleet lay anchored. The spectators had nothing to look at but the empty sea, yet no one seemed inclined to abandon a hard-won spot along the wall. Sooner or later, a ship would appear. Would it be Massilian or Roman? The eyes of Massilia watched, dazzled by morning sunlight glinting off the waves, and waited.
From behind us, never ceasing, came the sound of chanting from the temples. It swelled or receded according to the whims of the wind that carried it to our ears. For long spells I took no notice and forgot about the chanting; then I would suddenly hear it again and realize it had never gone away. Chants to Artemis, chants to Ares, chants to a host of other gods competed for the ears of Olympus. Different chants echoed simultaneously through the city. Sometimes they clashed in dissonance. Sometimes, in rare, evanescent moments, they combined in accidental harmonies of unearthly beauty.
Like everyone else on the wall, we fell to discussing what was happening and what might happen next.
“It’s what Apollonides and the Timouchoi have been waiting for, praying for—the arrival of these ships from Pompey,” said Hieronymus. “Unless the blockade can be broken, it’s only a matter of time until the city falls. Even if Trebonius can’t break through the walls, starvation will do his work for him. The famine has started. Do you know, there’s even talk of cutting my rations. My rations, the scapegoat’s portion! That shows you just how badly things are going.” On the wall not far away a child was crying persistently, probably from hunger. Hieronymus sighed. “You saw the fleets sail out, Gordianus. How many Massilian galleys did you count?”
“Eighteen, plus a number of smaller craft.”
“And Caesar’s galleys, how many of those did you count?”
“Eighteen as well.”
“And word has it that the fleet from Pompey numbers eighteen vessels as well. No doubt the priests will find some mystical significance in these multiples of eighteen! But what it means in practical terms is that the combined Massilian and Pompeian ships outnumber those of Caesar two to one. A clear advantage that any gambler would appreciate! Except, of course, that we’ve already seen what happens when Massilian galleys run up against those of Caesar, even when Caesar’s ships were built in a rush and manned by infantry—disaster for Massilia! Granted, Pompey’s reinforcements should provide at least an even match…but why did their commander anchor at Taurois? Why didn’t he sail straight to Massilia if his intention is to break the blockade? There’s something not quite right about this so-called ‘relief’ force. Do you know what I think? I think they’re headed for Spain to join with the Pompeian navy there, and this stop in the vicinity of Massilia is no more than a courtesy call, to sniff the wind and see which way it’s blowing. Oh, they’ll render assistance to Massilia—as long as it’s not too much bother. But what sort of fight are they going to put up when they see the kind of warriors they’re up against and their own blood begins to color the sea red? Say, what’s this?” From his pouch he produced another stuffed date, peered at it distastefully, then flung it into the sea. I heard a little moan from Davus, followed by the sound of his stomach growling.
“You may be right, Hieronymus,” I granted. “But you may be wrong. I can imagine another scenario. The fleets do battle and Caesar’s ships are destroyed. Why not? Pompey has officers every bit as clever as Caesar’s, and fighting men who are just as brave. The blockade is broken. The Timouchoi regain control of the sea and the coastline. Trading vessels can come and go. The city’s food stores are replenished; the famine is lifted. As long as the walls hold firm, Massilia can hold off Trebonius indefinitely. Or perhaps do better than that: If these eighteen ships from Pompey arrive in Massilia filled with soldiers, Domitius and Apollonides might even dare to mount a counterattack against Trebonius. Trebonius could be forced to retreat, might even be destroyed. If Massilia can be made into a secure stronghold for Pompey, then Caesar’s route back to Italy wo
uld be blocked. He could be trapped in Spain. Meanwhile, Pompey could muster his forces in Greece and Asia, sail back to Italy to take on Marc Antony—”
“‘Might’…‘Could’…‘What if?’” Hieronymus shook his head. “In a universe ruled by capricious gods, anything is possible. But close your eyes. What do you hear? A child crying because it’s hungry. Apollonides and the Timouchoi are responsible for that. When Caesar came knocking at our gates, they made a choice—and they chose wrongly. That was the moment to seek the gods’ wisdom. Now it’s too late….”
So we spent the long day, talking politics and warfare. When those subjects paled, we moved on to others—our favorite Greek dramas and Roman comedies, the relative merits of various philosophers, the prose of Caesar compared to that of Cicero. Hieronymus delighted in being argumentative. Whatever side I took, he took the other, and usually got the better of me. To his advantage, he seemed freshly versed on every subject, like a schoolboy immersed in learning. In his role as scapegoat, his every pleasure had been catered to; books, denied him in his years as a beggar, were among those pleasures. Massilia was famous for its academies and had no shortage of books. They had been delivered to the scapegoat’s house by the cartload. He had stuffed himself with scrolls just as he had stuffed himself with food.
Hours passed. The chanting from the temples never ceased.
Davus contributed little to the conversation, except for an occasional grumble from his stomach. I grew hungry too, if the stirring of appetite experienced by a well-fed man when he goes without food for a few hours is worthy of being called hunger. How did it compare to what the spectators along the battlements were experiencing? In a city under siege, noncombatants always receive smaller rations than their defenders. Women, children, and the old are the first victims of famine, and the least able to withstand it. To what level of daily, hourly craving had the spectators around us already descended? How much thinner would they be stretched, and how much longer would they have to endure it? Truly starving people will eat anything to fill their bellies—wood shavings, the stuffing from pillows, even dirt. Hunger robs its victims of every shred of dignity before it snuffs out their lives. And for those who survive starvation, pestilence inevitably follows. Then surrender to the besieger; then rape, plunder, slavery….
Like the spectators along the battlements, I anxiously watched the sea.
“Do you know the Fallacy of Enkekalymmenos?” Hieronymus suddenly asked.
Davus furrowed his brow at the long Greek word.
“The Fallacy of the Veiled One,” I translated.
“Yes. It goes something like this: ‘Can you recognize your mother?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Do you recognize this veiled one?’ ‘No.’ ‘Yet this veiled one is your mother. Hence you can recognize your mother…and not recognize her.’”
I frowned. “Whatever made you think of that?”
“I’m not sure. Something I read recently. Aristotle, was it? Or Plato…?”
Davus looked thoughtful. “I don’t see the point. You could put a veil over any woman and trick her child into not recognizing her. But—it wouldn’t necessarily work.” He raised an eyebrow and looked uncommonly shrewd. “What if the child recognized her perfume?”
“I suspect the veil is metaphorical, Davus.”
“The fallacy is an epistemological allegory,” Hieronymus interjected, but this, too, was Greek to Davus.
I cleared my throat, willing to debate the fallacy out of simple boredom. “How do we know what we know? How can we be sure of what we know? And what do we mean by ‘knowing,’ anyway? Very often we say we ‘know’ a person or a thing, when all we really mean is that we know what they look like. To truly know a thing, to know its essence, is knowledge of a different order.”
Hieronymus shook his head. “But that’s not the point of the fallacy. The point is that you can both know and not know at the same time. You can be in a state of knowledge and in a state of ignorance about the same subject simultaneously.”
I shrugged. “That merely describes most people, about most subjects, most of the time. It seems to me—”
“Look!” said Davus. “Look there!”
A ship had appeared, sailing around the headland from the direction of Taurois. By the pale blue pennant atop its mast, we knew at once that it was a Massilian vessel.
A great cheer erupted from the spectators. Old men stamped their feet. Children let out shrill screams. Women who had stood for hours beneath the hot sun swooned and fainted. Although the ship was still too far off to appreciate the sight, many of the spectators waved their bits of cloth in the air.
The cheering grew louder as the vessel approached the harbor entrance. But no other vessel was seen to be following, and the cheering began to fade. Of course, the fact that the ship was arriving alone did not necessarily forebode something sinister; perhaps it was a messenger ship sent ahead of the rest to carry news of victory. Still, there was something disturbing in the way the ship approached, not on a steady course but veering back and forth erratically, as if the crew were shorthanded or completely exhausted. As the vessel drew nearer, it became evident that it had suffered considerable damage. The ramming beak at the prow was in splinters. Many of the oars had been lost or broken, so that the long row of paddles along the waterline had as many gaps as a beggar’s grin. The remaining oars moved out of time with each other, as if the rowers had no drummer to keep them to a rhythm. The deck was a shambles, with overturned catapults and broken planking, scattered with prostrate bodies that did not move. The crewmen who manned the sail did not wave as they approached the harbor entrance but kept their eyes downcast and their faces averted. One figure in particular I noticed, an officer wearing a light blue cape. He stood alone at the prow of the ship, but instead of facing forward he kept his back to the city, as if unable to bear the sight of Massilia.
The cheering dwindled until it died altogether. A cold silence descended upon the spectators.
All eyes turned toward the headland, watching for the next ship to appear. But when ships were sighted—many ships, a whole fleet sailing in formation—they were not where anyone expected to see them. They were well out to sea, far beyond the offshore islands, barely within sight. They were sailing with all speed in a westerly direction, away from the scene of the battle and away from Massilia.
“Davus, you brag about your keen eyesight. What do you see out there?” I asked, though I already knew what the answer must be.
He shaded his brow and squinted. “Not Massilian ships; no pale blue pennants. And not those rough-hewn galleys of Caesar’s, either. But they are Roman warships.”
“How many?”
He shrugged. “Quite a few.”
“Count them!”
I watched his lips move. “Eighteen,” he finally announced. “Eighteen Roman galleys.”
“The so-called relief ships from Pompey! All together. All intact. Sailing off toward Spain. They didn’t take part in the battle at all! They must have hung back, watching and waiting. If the Massilian fleet had looked a fair match for Caesar’s, surely they would have joined the fight. This can only mean—”
I was interrupted by a sound so strange, so full of hopeless despair, it froze my blood. The damaged, returning vessel must have reached the harbor and been boarded by those anxiously awaiting it. The crew had delivered their news. The sound I heard must have originated there, with the first men to hear that news. They moaned. Those who stood behind them heard the noise and repeated it. That wailing moan was a message without words, more devastating than any words could be. It spread through the city like flames through a forest, growing louder and louder. It reached the pious in their temples, whose chanting abruptly turned to shouts and screams. It reached the spectators on the wall and moved toward us so rapidly and so palpably that I cringed as it approached and broke over us like a wave of pure despair.
The whole city joined in a great collective moan. I had never heard anything like it. If the gods have ears, they
surely heard it, too, yet the heavens gave no response; the sky remained a blank. Even a hard-hearted man can be stirred to pity by a bleating lamb or a whimpering dog. Are the gods so much higher than mortals that they can hear the despair of a whole city and feel nothing?
A kind of madness gripped the spectators along the wall. Women dropped to their knees and tore their hair. An old man climbed atop the wall and jumped into the sea. People turned toward the Sacrifice Rock, pointed at the scapegoat and screamed curses in Greek too fast and too crude for me to follow.
“I think perhaps it’s time for me to go home,” said Hieronymus. His voice was steady but his face was pale. He had slipped off his shoes while sitting cross-legged on the rock. He stood and bent over to slip them on again, then gave a little cry and reached down. He had stepped on something.
“Pretty,” was all he said as he held it up and peered at it. It glinted in the sunlight: a ring made of silver, quite small, as if for a woman’s finger, and set with a single stone. The stone was dark and shiny. He slipped it into the pouch that had contained the stuffed dates. I wanted to have a closer look, but Hieronymus was in a rush. More curses were shouted at him. The crowd on either side was gradually converging toward the Sacrifice Rock.
The way down the slanting rock face was simple compared to the method by which Davus and I had climbed onto the summit from the wall. We descended more swiftly than I would have preferred, but I never felt the sort of danger I had felt swinging over empty space with Davus’s hand clutching mine. Above and all around us the moaning continued. As we descended, the noise, echoing off the city walls, grew even louder and more unearthly.
Near the base the way grew steeper, so that we had to climb down backwards, facing the rock. As we neared the bottom I looked over my shoulder and was relieved to see that the area looked deserted; I had feared that an angry crowd might await the scapegoat. But where was the green litter that had brought him? It appeared that his litter bearers had panicked and taken flight.
Last Seen in Massilia: A Novel of Ancient Rome Page 15